Punished by innovation: The need for better focus on IMPLEMENTATION of educational technologies

Nearly two decades ago, educational innovation researcher, Gene Hall (1995), warned of a growing "development-implementation balance". The pace of innovation in educational technologies, on top of the increased accreditation and accountability demands placed on P-12 teachers and higher ed. instructors, suggests a need to slow down and think through the consequences of adoption decisions.

While it has been rightly criticized as a theoretical framework that is prone to determinism, there are fundamental truths in diffusion of innovations theory that have a lot to offer developers and adopters, alike. Set along a timeline from antecedent (background) to process (promoting educational innovations) and culminating in consequences (implementation)-centered variables, my own research on applications of DOI to educational contexts has centered attention on the need to more carefully consider the fit (or lack of fit) between a given innovation and the particularities of teaching contexts. Another theme is the lack of connection between change agents (developers, administrators) and adopters (teachers), which often results in outright rejection from classroom use or superficial implementation.

Here are a couple of related articles that offer some initial findings on my Diffusion of Innovations in Education Model (DIEM):